Riot Games has revealed the full plans for the next League of Legends update, with LoL Patch 26.9 bringing a lot of big changes for Season 2.
A day prior, it was confirmed that reworked Static Shivv will make it into LoL live servers in Patch 26.9.
So, Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison decided to then focus the patch preview on the upcoming champion buffs and nerfs.
LoL Patch 26.9 Champion Buffs
- Buffs
- Gragas
- Tahm Kench
- Taliyah
- Warwick
Phroxzon admits that the adjustments made to Tahm Kench in the last patch hit him too hard, saying:
“We overnerfed Tahm Kench last patch; we intended to buff TK support overall, and these buffs are more skewed there, though they will overall affect both roles.”
Meanwhile, Phroxzon claims Warwick has been “languishing” even in average play, where he’d usually succeed, so is getting a slight buff.
LoL Patch 26.9 Champion Nerfs
- Nerfs
- Ambessa
- Briar
Ambessa has been a polarising champion since release and according to Phroxzon, Riot is hoping her ultimate was the main issue with the highly mobile champion:
“After being out for almost a year and a half, we’ve learnt a lot about Ambessa’s power curves, strengths and weaknesses, good and bad matchups, etc.
“One area we feel has slightly less counterplay than we think is long-term healthy is Ambessa’s ult warning – Given its long cast range, it often feels more missable (burden is on the caster) than dodgeable (counterplay for user).”
Riot is pushing Ambessa’s ult cast time from 0.55s to 0.77s to try and fix this.
Meanwhile, Phroxzon claims Briar has been too strong, especially in average play, and is trying to encourage players to build her slightly more tanky by nerfing her health growth.
LoL Patch 26.9 Champion Adjustments
- Adjustments
- Ezreal
- Kennen
- Shyvana
- Teemo
- Udyr
- Xin Zhao
- Zeri
- Zoe
LoL Patch 26.9 will see huge changes to Shyvana with updates to her base stats, Q, W, and E, as the Shyvana rework released earlier this year hasn’t quite hit the mark.
“The goals of these changes are to increase differentiation between the AP and AD builds,” Phroxzon claims.
“It’s also been a common pain point that Shyv’s shield is both easily popped and having the Movespeed tied to that makes her play pattern quite binary and unsatisfying in the moment, so we’re making the Movespeed from W more consistent and available,” Phroxzon added.
Phroxzon also revealed that Riot is adjusting Zeri because, while she is more balanced now, she isn’t as satisfying to play anymore and has lost her identity.
“These changes are aimed at trading off some of her damage output to re-emphasize her speed outputs (some of the main reasons players play her).
“Along with this are some feels-good changes (like E refunding on attacks vs everything).”
What do you make of these upcoming champion updates? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord.
And prepare for more changes with everything we know about new LoL champion, Locke.
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